Prehistoric Creatures

Do real-life prehistoric creatures exist in your setting? If so, in what form? Where do they live? How many of them are there? Has someone domesticated them?

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blog.nature.org/science/2018/01/12/australian-firehawk-raptors-intentionally-spread-wildfires/
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There are Dire Wolves. They have been domesticated by the Neanderthals for use in herding mammoths.

There's all sorts of prehistoric shit; dinosaurs and mammoths and sabertooth tigers and a bunch of other species.
They have "exiled" themselves in the Last Prairies. It's the westernmost corner of the world, where few humans have dared to tread in millenia.

There are some human tribes remaining there, and they have domesticated some species. In fact, the whole idea of the Last Prairies was built around "I want some place where primitive barbarians ride terror birds".

Yes, but the game only stated about a month ago so I haven't gotten around to including them yet. I'm planning on having a lot of sea monsters be prehistoric, as well as having terror birds and those giant club tailed armadillo turtle things. They're rad.

You mean Doedicurus? Yeah they're pretty cool, in fact the Ice Age had a lot of cool creatures you could use in a campaign.

Basilosaurus is based as fuck

The perspective on the head bothers me to no end, from the camera position you should be able to see into the things mouth, rather than the upper row of teeth followed by nothing.

Shit art is shit, looks like drawn by a 7yo

Orcs use these shitheads as heavy cavalry in my campaign.
They are painted red ofc so they almost go as fast as a horse.

Yes, though I like to tweak them under the assumption that they would've evolved at least a little to fit the times.
Mammoths and aurochs are staples of giant pastoralism.
Flightless raptors are bred as a kind of hunting dog equivalent by orcs.
A triceratops equivalent serve the orcs as armored cavalry.
Sabertooths, giant sloths and terrorbirds still roam around in the less civilized parts of the world.
Worgs are more or less an unsettlingly intelligent version of the andrewsarchus.
A bunch of sea creatures I haven't gone through the effort of specifying are assumed to swim around making life hard for sailors.

that sounds cool as fuck desu

what kind of dinosaurs and what kind species were domesticated?

Although the true dinosaurs are long dead, relatives of lizards resembling outdated inaccurate depictions do inhabit the foggy swamps of a colossal crater valley. Yet these terrible lizards are poor replacement, sluggish during the nights, naked scaled and tongue flicking. There are rumors that powerful necromancy has brought back a REAL dinosaur, shrieking, roaring, all flashing teeth and merciless slashing talons, plumed with fury. If such tales are true, then the beast is truely a force to be feared.

Thanks, user! I'm still writing about it, and I don't really know prehistoric fauna, but

>what kind of dinosaurs
So far, definitely the feathered T-Rex, velociraptor, microraptor, triceratops, dilophosaurus (the Jurassic Park kind, I don't know if they've been disproved by now), brachiosaurus, archeopterix and pterosaurs.

>and what kind species were domesticated?
Other than terror birds, there's the megatherion, some pterosaurs, rarely mammoths. I wanted some bovids or rhinos too, but I don't know any species.

What everv happened to that setting where 4channers got stuck on,an island full of raptor?

Yes, why come up with original sea monsters when earth's history is filled with creatures that fit that description?

Mammal-like reptiles are fairly common and some of the herbivorous species have been semi-domesticated. Local "birds" descended from things like Yi qi and thus have batlike membranous wings. Small (less than 3 meters in length) terrestrial crocodiles are common in tropical and subtropical environments. Various types of prehistoric carnivorous ungulates still exist but have been started to get replaced by recently emerged feliforms and caniforms.

Those boar things from walking with beasts, some generic large fauna, a shit ton of unknown sea monsters, Not!Neanderthal, etc etc.

Megafauna has been generally driven out of the civilized lands, but remain in many other places in the world.

>Mixing dinosaurs with superior Megafauna
This irks me slightly, but you do you.

>Rhinos
Elasmotherium, Paraceratherium, Teleoceras and that one with the Y-shaped horn.
>Bovids
aurochs and Ice age bison.

Pop down to /an/ and look for a prehistoric thread, those are always good fun.

Dinosaurs can be interesting but 99% of the time people use same dozen or so boring species instead of less famous but more interesting ones.

>>Plumed with fury
Nice word choice user. Sounds excellent

Pretty sure spitting dilophosaurus was always just a Crichton thought experiment along the line of Cheney's unknown unknowns. Fuck all soft tissue gets fossilized.

>Do real-life prehistoric creatures exist in your setting?

Let's see:
-Mammoths&mastodonts
-Woolly rhinos
-Great Stags
-Aurochs
-Steppe hyenas
-Snow lions
-Dire wolves
-Terror birds
-Androwsarchuses
-Chalicothereses
-Paraceratheriums
-Archaeotheriums
-Hyenadons
-Pterradons
-Mosauruses
-Dinos
-Postosuchuses
-Gorgonopsids
-Dunkleosteus

and a host of other cool fuckers

Besides the goblinoids taming dinosaurs for labour and war*, the kavajans herd megatheriums as their prime cattle.

*Made up a titanosaur with CR 14. It's just waiting for the right time.

>Androwsarchus mentioned pretty much every second post

Guess that Walking with Beats made them pretty popular.

>Walking with Beats

It did have a somewhat rememberable soundtrack

Yeah, I understand it'd irk people who actually know their science. I'm really just choosing based on aesthetics.

>Elasmotherium
Looks great, I'm adding those.

>that one with the Y-shaped horn
Holy shit, is that a thing? Then yeah, that one, definitely.

>Ice age bison
And those fuckers as well.

Thanks for the help, user! I'll make sure to check out /an/ as well.

I'm furious with our ancestors for killing off all the megafauna, but at the same time, I'm impressed they managed to do it with nothing more advanced that sticks and stones.

>Holy shit, is that a thing?

Mammals have produced plenty of weird horn shapes over the millennia.

How much of pre-human megafauna got killed by first human settlers is rather easy way to figure out how based those settlers were. More megafauna dead=more based the settlers.

Very litte. Most went extinct before we even discovered fire.

>Fact: Aborigine's are the most powerful race in the world

This, but unironically. You need max END to be able to survive on an island like that without modern tech for as long as they have.

Fun fact: The Aborigines were one of the first human civilizations to burn forests in large amounts to create grassland. "Fire stick farming" they call it.

This was a contributing factor to the extinction of the majority of the Australian Megafaune, some of it may as well be in a Fantasy game:

>Thylacoleo
Were around the size of current lions, but much stockier and had opposable thumbs as well as the ability to stand and mybe even walk on two legs.

>Megalania
7 meter long Komodo Dragons, nuff said.

>Meiolania
Fuckhueg land turtle with a spiked tail and a spiked head which probably even took away its ability to retracts its head due to the spike size. Reinforced skeletal structure.

>Quinkana
7 meter crocodile with long legs

>Wonambi
Potentially venomous AND constricting 7 to 10 meter ambush snake.

Leptictidium and Leaellynasaura have been domesticated as pets in mine.

Obligatory, localized for Veeky Forums

>Were around the size of current lions, but much stockier and had opposable thumbs as well as the ability to stand and mybe even walk on two legs.
I suspect marsupials were meant to rule the world next but we murdered them all before they got the chance

The sheer thought of an actual dropbear that size is unsettling to say the least.

>velociraptor
>risk of disembowelment
How much larger is the risk here compared to say, keeping a lynx as a pet? Velociraptor domesticated and bred for temperament and smaller claws would be only slightly more dangerous than a housecat, yes?

They are dinosaurs, with less evolved brains than most modern birds.

You may be safe if you imprint at the moment of birth if we go by birb standards, but that wouldn't protect anyone else.

ALso why the fuck would you keep a Velociraptor with smaller claws? Its main claw is what gives the velo it's ability to walk and run properly.

I don't know much about dinosaur biology, I'm just starting from a place of "pet velociraptors would be cool" and trying to justify it in a way that at least seems believable at a glance.

Intelligence-wise, would they make better pets if they were smarter (as smart as a dog, say)? Or would that amp up the danger?

Predator intelligence is a double-edge sword, but since Velociraptors were most likely pack animals, that would probably make it easier.

Generally, taming an animal involves being a provider for that animal - which is why cats self tamed as human settlements began producing enough vermin for them to survive on far more easily than in the wild and why dogs are still trained most commonly by administering food rewards.

However - let's take the smartest modern bird, the Raven, and the needs are now more complex. Cleaning the bird, physical contact and socialising are now also required due to higher intelligence having more basic needs than lower intelligence.
If we go even further into the realm of Gorillas, taming requires a lifetime of mutual bonding and ends up being more favor-based than trained.

Reptiles have no souls. They would only use their intelligence for evil.

I don't see what point you're trying to make with that comparison, user. I mean, any pet that is as safe to have as a lynx is still pretty fucking risky.

Dinosaurs aren't reptiles

But it's doable. Throw a pet lynx in a campaign as a one- or two-off and your players will note it as an interesting quirk but it's not going to draw questions the same way a guy with a pet tiger might.

Also used lynx as an example because it's more-or-less a larger, more dangerous housecat.

>Worgs are more or less an unsettlingly intelligent version of the andrewsarchus.

I'm stealing this.

>f3 Entelodont
>No matches

No love for the seven foot tall, carnivorous hell-pig?

They're as much reptiles as crocs are.

Crocodilians are firmly ectotherms of the class reptilia. Dinosaurs were endotherms, of Dinosauria. They do both belong to the crown group Archosauria, but thats about it.

Dinosaurs are as close to reptiles as birds and mammals are: A very distant evolutionary ancestor, but not the same,

They're all just highly specialized types of fish anyway.

Which are just pretentious molluscs.

It's been partially discredited that the early colonizers killed the megafauna. It's more accepted now that they were already weak for climatic reasons and the added pressure from hunting finished them off.

Multicelular life was a mistake, they're all just fucking commies.

>Dinosaurs aren't reptiles
You and your psychotic hippie friends are done. Birds evolved from dinosaurs. Dinosaurs weren't birds already.

>Fun fact: The Aborigines were one of the first human civilizations to burn forests in large amounts to create grassland. "Fire stick farming" they call it.
>Aborigines
>first

umm try again sweety

blog.nature.org/science/2018/01/12/australian-firehawk-raptors-intentionally-spread-wildfires/

My bullshit alarm is ringing here, biology is not my field but synapsids branch off waaaaaay more basally than archosaurs

Uh, you do know hawks aren't human?

There's also a chance that's behavior learned from humans

Fuck's sake, 'stralia.

>They do both belong to the crown group Archosauria, but thats about it.
That's not "about it," that IS it. Archosauria is still a reptilian group.

>Dinosaurs are as close to reptiles as birds and mammals are
Synapsids diverged from proper reptiles millions of years before the first true Archosaurs evolved. Crocodiles and chickens have more in common with T. Rex than dingoes and bats do with turtles.

Cross yet another thing off the unique to Humans List. Let's see what's left...... ergh symbolisim and philosophy?

I kinda use them in my setting.

They are crossed with dwarfs to make weird mountain centaurs who spend their lives fighting dragons.

I would consider a Crocodile or Alligator an acceptable Dinosaur proxy in the sense of what to 'expect': a disturbingly cunning, deceptively fast, reptilian creature capable of remarkable carnage, but also social and committed enough to form groups and raise it's young with patience and kindness.
I say this because Crocodiles/Alligators are the only egg-laying animal I've seen that will actually help their babies hatch if they notice they're having a difficult time of it (let me know if birds do this): picking the egg up and giving it an exceptionally gentle crunch to break the shell. Crocodiles/Alligators are also very social: they make a lot of noises and calls at one another, they bask in the sun together, and they will loosely cooperate with each other if they pay out is big enough to share.

I think people have a kind of knee-jerk reaction with Dinosaurs in a way: feeling the NEED to be as scientifically 'perceived' accurate as possible with excessive feathers and other bird like qualities, when in doing so they underestimate and miss the point that Crocodiles, Alligators, Monitors, and other old Dinosaur-period reptiles aren't as stupid or clumsy as we understand them, they've just got great poker faces.

>Let's see what's left...... ergh symbolisim and philosophy?

Shitposting and banter mostly, once animals figure out how to do those our reign will be over.

Humans are the paper to the rock thay they were. Hence the reason they died. Fantasy ya'll don't you love it?

A paladin in my setting had one of these as his animal companion. Still not sure exactly how well it would fare in combat though.

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I don't think reptiles are as cunning as people make them out to be in movies. They are the first living robots. Their feels are controlled by temperature and instinct.

Stop watching jurassic park children. People have been killing reptiles with wood and stone and bare feet since before we could write as a species

>some sperm out about movies in response to biology
Are you even reading what you reply to?

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How boring, Europe had better animals desu.

the american environment hadn't been connected to the eurasian pressure cooker for a long time, so when the bering strait became the bering land bridge it was basically the evolutionary equivalent of the short bus.

>around the size of current lions.

They weren't that big. They were about the size of a jaguar.

They were actually more closely related to hippos. Which kinda makes them even scarier.

...

>They are the first living robots
>reptiles
>first
so what about fish, what about invertebrates? what about single cellular life?

One that is one big swan and small elephant.